Angelica [show/exhibition]

Angelica was commissioned by and produced in conjunction with the Museo Internazionale delle Marionette Antonio Pasqualino, where the film was screened 11 - 25 October, 2013. The exhibition was accompanied by a publication with commissioned texts by writers and curators.
Taking as a loose starting point Boiardo’s tales of ‘Orlando in Love’, the film forms a simultaneous re-scripting of two parallel narratives: that of Angelica, the sole female character figured within the stories; and the puppet theatre itself – its traditional machinations, performers, and performances.
Mini cameras attached to the puppets and to the puppeteers catch a variety of movement, surprising images, and unusual vantage points. As these views are spliced into one narrative, one senses the shifting, unstable nature of what we often take at face value to be true – both about the world around us, and the stories we tell ourselves within it. Even Angelica changes from moment to moment, embodied by the many different versions of herself, puppets ranging in time period from the 17th Century to present-day.
In Angelica, no view is singular or predictable, no narrative or character entirely coherent. It is rather the gaps between these things that Cowan draws our attention to, asking us to consider how the roles of puppet and performer, theatre and performance, are constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed at any given moment.
Angelica was the subject of a paper delivered the international conference, Arte e Antropologia, November 2013, Quai Branly Paris.
Recently, Angelica was screened on the opening night of the exhibition /seconds. at the Sharjah Art Foundation, 11 October 2014.